LUCY Kirkwood’s powerful play The Welkin had its premiere at the National Theatre early in 2020, where its intended run was cut short by the first COVID lockdown. Now the students of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, directed by Emma Callander, have taken on the play and are performing it at the Weston Studio at the Old Vic until 16th November – and if you can get a ticket, please do.
Set (mostly) in 1759, in a small Suffolk town, it is the story of 12 women empanelled in judgement over a convicted murderess. Sally Poppy is one of their own, daughter of a rackety family with a bad reputation in the area. She, and a lover, have killed the young child of the local nobleman. The lover has been hanged. But Sally has announced that she is pregnant, which, if true, will commute her sentence from death to deportation. The “jury of matrons” must decide if she is “quick with child” and “with quick child” – one of those wonderfully complex English legal definitions.
Eleven women have been “chosen” for the task and the judge has insisted that the twelfth is the local midwife, Lizzy Luke, whose expertise will bring some practical knowledge to the almost impossible decision.
The title refers to the heavens and the fact that Halley’s Comet, which appears in the solar system every 72 to 80 years, is expected. Its next appearance will be in mid-2061.
The question is: “What changes?”
A wide variety of music has been chosen for the play, from Rameau to Tom Springfield and Kate Bush, all of it skillfully blended and finely sung by the exceptional cast, each of whom creates a defined and memorable characterisation.
You might be forgiven for thinking it’s a sort of female Twelve Angry Men, or a spin-off from The Crucible, but The Welkin is much more than that. It addresses head-on the enduring questions of class, wealth, male dominance, fertility, body-ownership and feminism. There are no real heroines or villains – each character is a flawed human being.
At the centre, Ellie Spooner’s Lizzy Luke takes on the task of saving Sally (Lotte Pearl) , whose unsympathetic character continues to infuriate the matrons. But she is fighting not just ingrained personal prejudice but the might of the establishment at a time when men literally owned their wives and daughters, and the landed gentry wielded absolute power, both overtly and covertly.
The Welkin is a shattering play, and this cast of young actors could not have done it better. Each of them – Ellie Carnaby, Sunny Chung, Emaan Durrani, Oscar Gough, Emily Hurst, Tamzin Khan, Spike Maxwell, Lili Mohammad, Violet Morris, Lily Simpkiss, Maiya Louise Thapar, Sam Grove and Molly Whatton Williams, as well as Ellie and Lotte – will look back on this BOVTS production with pride.
GP-W